Regional Burden of Illness Data Analysis Workshop, November 2009, Barbados

In November 2009, a regional Burden of Illness (BOI) Analysis Workshop was conducted in Barbados.  There were 18 participants (epidemiologist/ representative and persons from the statistical unit) from nine CAREC member countries, namely Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos.  The purpose of the workshop was to strengthen national capacity to conduct data analyses, including the calculation of burden of illness of selected diseases from survey data.  Participants were required to enter and clean their data prior to the workshop.  Thus the workshop focussed on training on analysis of each country’s BOI data (using a standard template developed by the BOI steering committee) and the calculation of burden of illness of selected diseases using data from population and laboratory surveys.  Following this workshop, participants were expected to transfer the skills acquired to others in their country, conduct further analyses on their country’s BOI data and produce a country report.